FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

OPCW Deploys Its Fact-Finding Mission to Douma

April 10, 2018 (EIRNS)—The Director of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ambassador Ahmet Uzumcu, and the OPCW’s Technical Secretariat, today requested the Syrian Arab Republic to make the necessary arrangements to receive a Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) from OPCW to establish facts around the allegations of use of chemical weapons in Douma, Syria. This coincided with a request from the Syrian Arab Republic and the Russian Federation to investigate the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma.

The OPCW team did leave for Syria on Tuesday.

The OPCW Center, located in The Hague, Netherlands, has been monitoring the incident in Douma closely, and made a preliminary analysis of the reports of the alleged use of chemical weapons immediately after they were issued. The FFM is gathering more information from all available sources to establish whether chemical weapons were used, and will then report its findings to the states parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention.

“The OPCW cannot and will not release information about an ongoing investigation,” its press release today states.

“This policy exists to preserve the integrity of the investigatory process and its results as well as to ensure the safety and security of OPCW experts and personnel involved.”

In response to persistent allegations of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, the OPCW’s FFM was set up in 2014 “to establish facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, in the Syrian Arab Republic.”